Here the portraits assumed the proportions of history. Did not this
branch, descended from warlike stock, seem like a fragment taken from the
European annals? Was it not a symbolical image of the progress of
civilization, of regular legislation struggling against barbaric customs?
Thanks to these respectable counsellors and judges, one might reverse the
motto: 'Non solum toga', in favor of their race. But it did not seem as
if these bearded ancestors looked with much gratitude upon this
parliamentary flower added to their feudal crest. They appeared to look
down from the height of their worm-eaten frames upon their enrobed
descendants with that disdainful smile with which the peers of France
used to greet men of law the first time they were called to sit by their
side, after being for so long a time at their feet.

In the space between the windows and upon the remaining woodwork was a
crowd of military men, with here and there an Abbe with cross and mitre,
a Commander of Malta, and a solemn Canon, sterile branches of this
genealogical tree. Several among the military ones wore sashes and
plumes of the colors of Lorraine; others, even before the union of this
province to France, had served the latter country; there were lieutenant-
colonels of infantry and cavalry; some dressed in blue coats lined with
buff serge and little round patches of black plush, which served as the
uniform for the dragoons of the Lorraine legion.

Last of all was a young man with an agreeable face, who smiled
superciliously from under a vast wig of powdered hair; a rose was in the
buttonhole of his green cloth pelisse with orange facings, a red
sabrecache hung against his boots a little lower than the hilt of his
sabre. The costume represented a sprightly officer of the Royal Nassau
hussars. The portrait was hung on the left of the entrance door and only
separated by it from his great-grandfather of 1247, whom he might have